Not Just Technology

Many IT organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of managing the myriad of applications they are deploying across the organization. Distributed computing is rapidly changing the landscape and the implications of managing applications. It is quite typical to find that IT begins its search for solutions by asking what point solutions are available to solve problems. However, applications management is not just a technology solution chosen by the central IT organization. Having an effective process for applications management requires a cooperative effort by all parts of the enterprise -- end users, executive management, and the IT organization. In developing an applications management strategy, an organization must establish both procedures and a working rapport between IT and end users.

Applications Management and the IT Service Organization

In an effort to streamline operations and reduce costs, many companies have given line-of-business and department managers great flexibility in how they manage their information systems. The central IT organization is no longer the only source of support. Many companies are outsourcing operational management functions and thereby creating competition for internal IT organizations. Users will make decisions about whom to entrust their information systems to based on their perceptions of how cost-effective internal IT solutions are. Users will look at the services IT provides as well as the cost of those services. In this environment, a good relationship with end-user departments is critical to IT's success as a service organization.

An IT organization can maintain a good working relationship with end users in a number of ways, including managing end-user perceptions, establishing service-level agreements, defining the role of the help desk, and instituting procedures.

Managing User Perceptions

IT organizations should take a cooperative approach when designing an applications management strategy. Users may be unaware of the complexities of building and deploying applications, so IT management should invite key users to help run the project team. Users may be in the best position to understand the implications of support of the deployment environment. In addition, because users understand the impact of the applications on their business and customers, they are in the best position to know what is really important and what isn't. The system that tracks customer service problems may need a lot more attention in terms of applications management than the parts-tracking system. In this way, all parties will understand and agree on what they can really expect from application availability and performance.

Service-Level Agreements

To determine if IT organizations are satisfying SLA terms, an application view of availability with response-time information is needed. Therefore, IT must choose appropriate technology that will enable it to easily determine application availability and performance. Although the IT organization will choose the tools, end users should be involved in the selection process so they will have confidence in the methods and tools used to measure application availability and performance.

Role of Help Desk/Service Center

Establishing Procedures

User departments should also establish their own procedures for how work will be accomplished when applications are not available and who reports and follows up on problems. Someone must be responsible for setting application priorities if multiple applications are affected by an outage and some applications cannot be made available immediately.

Users need to consider organizational issues as well as technology solutions when developing an applications management strategy. The objective of managing with an applications view is to ensure that business processes continue to run smoothly. This business-process view is not something that the typical IT organization is used to dealing with. This is particularly true on the deployment side. The traditional operations departments of most companies were established to deal with a very predictable mainframe environment. Now these organizations are being asked to change to support distributed applications. These operations departments will have to learn to work closely with business organizations if they are going to be successful.

If your organization is beginning to implement a distributed applications environment via Intranets, client/server, or packaged applications, you should establish an applications management plan as quickly as possible. Before you even select a single product, begin with the following guidelines:

• Establish a task force that combines IT management, key developers, operations personnel, business management, and end users. Select a charismatic business manager as the chairperson of the committee.
• Establish acceptance performance thresholds. Is any downtime acceptable? Look at the situation from a cost-of-lost-business perspective.
• Make sure that the development and implementation teams are responsible for the deployment and management of what they build. If developers will be called on later when the application is given to users, they will pay more attention to manageability.
• Make sure that everyone involved understands the business- process view of the applications environment. This will make the rest of the effort more focused and effective.